The camp was liberated on 15 April 1945 by Britishsoldiers.[3] Inside the camp, the British soldiers found 60,000 people,[2] and 13,000 dead bodies lying on the ground, unburied.[3] The scenes were horrific. They were described by the BBC's Richard Dimbleby, who was with the British soldiers:

“

Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British [soldier] to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.[4]